Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Grad Data

If you ask me (as someone did in the comments on yesterday's post) how many female grad students I am advising, I could tell you the exact number, although I won't. If, however, you ask me the number I have advised over my entire career, I could not have told you before looking up the data, as I just did.

This was interesting because, until I looked it up, I was very unsure about the specific ratio of female to male advisees. My uncertainty related in part to the fact that "advising" isn't always an exact thing. There are students with whom have I interacted quite a lot, but I was not their adviser. There have been students whom I advised for years, but then they dropped out for various reasons; they don't show up my official database of advisees, although some of them loom large in my advising memories. Also, I have been a professor at two universities, and I have been a real or honorary adviser of students at universities in other countries. Of all these advising experiences, I only counted those who graduated with me as the adviser or co-adviser of record.

According to that method of counting, the female : male ratio of my total advisees over my career to date is ~ 50 : 50.

I have absolutely no idea how this ratio relates to the number who have applied or otherwise expressed interest in working with me, but my general impression, which could well be unreliable, is that the actual ratio reflects the applicant ratio.

So, those are my data. There have been fluctuations in the ratio over the years -- including some times with no or very few women in my research group -- but overall I am quite happy with the numbers (and with the students themselves).

Some groups in my field and in my department have no women and some have mostly/only women, but many have a male : female ratio of between 40 : 60 and 60 : 40. My group is not unusual in its 50 : 50 ratio.

Do you notice that you tend to have large numbers of female students concentrated at certain times, rather than an even distribution of females throughout the years?

I ask because we* have a saying: once one woman joins a group, they ALL join. For example, my PhD advisor had one female grad student prior to me, then four of us joined over the course of about three years. We've since graduated and he's had no female students since then. It's the same with my current group. I was the first female in the lab and recently two others joined.

There aren't many women in my field, so it's quite odd, and definitely obvious, to have so many women in a single lab at once.

*When I say 'we' I mean the people with whom I went to graduate school. We often wondered why this was the case...our best guess was that it can be intimidating for a single female to join an all male group, but if there is a strong** female presence in the lab the intimidation factor is not as big an issue.

I feel like I submitted a paper and now am being asked to provide more data.. but in this case I don't mind, although I don't know the answers to some questions.

I do know that some of my colleagues who have had all-male research groups for a time have worried that this will discourage recruitment of women, and have in fact had trouble recruiting women students. I was worried about this myself at one point, but the success of a recent female graduate seems to have had a positive effect on recruiting. So, I think it is an important issue, but I only have some anecdotal evidence (as usual) to support my opinion.

To clarify: My point about the 50 : 50 not being unusual was that the ratio is not skewed relative to the pool of students who apply to work with me. That is, I do want diversity in my group, but I don't have to work too hard to get it (typically). Also, my advising ratio is not unusual compared to some other groups in my field/department, even if it doesn't reflect the overall demographics of my field.

I am a woman and I do not want to work for a woman PI; I spent a long time looking for postdoc positions and generally disregarded female PIs. I did interview with a few and it strengthened me in my belief that working for a woman is no good. At least for me. So far I only worked with male supervisors and it worked out very well. Is this considered sexism?

Anon @ 12:44: I am a woman and I do not want to work for a woman PI; I spent a long time looking for postdoc positions and generally disregarded female PIs.... Is this considered sexism?

I believe it is sexism, if you dismiss female PI's based on gender alone (do not consider their merit, standing in the field, etc.) I am curious -- why do you think it would necessarily be a bad idea for you to work for a female advisor?

Anonymous @12:44:00 PM said.."I did interview with a few and it strengthened me in my belief that working for a woman is no good."..."Is this considered sexism?"

Yes, this is sexism, and pretty sad. You are saying that there is something determined by gender that makes female advisors less qualified to advise you than male advisors. If this is not sexism what the @$%!&( it is?

I have 'interviewed' a few people and the only ones i wanted to have sex with were women (and maybe the pony-tailed buff delivery guy if i was really drunk).

is this sexism?

my point here is that you can have a personal preference for anything, any person, any whatever, no matter what's it based on, may it be experience or intuition. It does never make one sexist, let alone pathetic.

You are saying that there is something determined by gender that makes female advisors less qualified to advise you than male advisors. If this is not sexism what the @$%!&( it is?

actually, that's not sexist at all if you read carefully: female advisors are less qualified to advise YOU. not anyone, YOU. therefore, they might be qualified fine for anyone else, but not YOU. So it's YOU that makes them unqualified, not their sex. therefore it's not sexist at all.

There is nothing pathetic in not wanting to work for a woman. It is a personal choice. Certainly there were also a lot of men I did not want to work for. Choosing a lab goes like this: you pick the subject, you determine their standing in the field etc (as GMP said). Then, hopefully you get an interview, and then it has to be a match on the personal level AS WELL. Correct? And I PERSONALLY prefer working for a man. Asking whether this is sexism was just a way of arousing such reactions as "pathetic". I expected that. And here is the point: just stop all this sexism blablablabla. Men and women are equal. But not the same. For that matter, nobody is the same. And always bringing everything back to sexism is pathetic as well as discriminating. "Oh oh oh, this is not fair! It must be because I am a WOMAN!" That is pure bullshit and just an easy way out. What can anyone say against such irrational arguments?! Stop pointing out again and again that you are female. Just do your work and stop crying. By bringing all issues back to sexism, you actually belittle your own female self, as well as all other females that do not want to be associated with such bogus. Be happy you are a woman; it has certain advantages as well. And you females know that all very well!

@Tim; At least someone seems to understand my point (kind of?), however insignificant it may be...

@GMP; It's really just a (personal) feeling not wanting to work for a woman.. and like I said: my interviews with women strengthened that feeling. But of course there you can bring up the entire issue that there are not enough women at PI positions and therefore my choice was limited to a few and those few I did not like. And the very persistent ones can then bring that back again to being a result of sexism. And so on and on and on....

Hmm. I just realized something interesting. My husband (currently an assistant chemistry professor) has worked for only female PIs. Undergrad, grad, postdoc #1, and postdoc #2 - all women advisors. (I, on the other hand, have only worked for men. There were only two women PIs in my graduate department at the time, but neither overlapped with my research interests. I think the department is currently up to five female professors.)

I'm not going to speak to whether or not it's sexism, but I'd recommend you reconsider your word choice -- you say "strengthened my belief that working with a woman is no good." Taken out of context, that has kind of a bigoted ring to it.

But it sounds like you mean that you personally have had less success forging professional relationships with female supervisors, and not for lack of trying. Phrased that way, it doesn't sound so bad.

By the way, my favorite part of Anonymous 2:25 was where he claims that pointing out sexism "belittles your own female self." I guess "you" are supposed to silently triumph over any and all injustice -- just like he's doing by ranting in the comment section of FSP's blog.

my point here is that you can have a personal preference for anything, any person, any whatever, no matter what's it based on, may it be experience or intuition. It does never make one sexist, let alone pathetic.

You can have a preference, but that does not mean you have the right to act according to your preference. I am sure all the racists also have a personal preference, based on racist upbringing, for members of their own race. And they will exercise that preference in the manner of hiring people, promoting people etc of their race alone. Does that not make them racist? You bet it does.

Our personal preferences have everything to do with biases that we were fed/assimilated growing up. As adults, we should be able to recognize biases in ourselves and correct behavior.

This is especially important when one is in a position of power or in any professional setting. We must correct for our biases, wherever they come from, in order not to eliminate meritorious people.

" I did interview with a few and it strengthened me in my belief that working for Jew is no good."

" I did interview with a few and it strengthened me in my belief that working for an African American is no good."

" I did interview with a few and it strengthened me in my belief that working for a Muslim is no good."

"I did interview with a few and it strengthened me in my belief that working for short people is no good."

"I did interview with a few and it strengthened me in my belief that working for people that eat meat is no good."

I think it is sad (and yes, pathetic), that a person will not consider working with (or for) a woman, a Jew, a black person, etc. Yes, it is a personal choice, but not one I would not be proud of!

Personally, I would not work with micro-managing people, people that expect me to answer e-mails at 3AM, people that don't do exciting work, people that will not take the time to mentor me, people that will not respect my private life, etc, etc. How is any of this related to gender or race?

If you have negative experience with a group, race, or sex, you will be disinclined to interact with them. It's a prejudice we ALL SHARE.

All you people disagree, because every person has their own unique experience. But what binds us all, is that we all draw on our OWN experience, much more than on anybody elses. Therefore condemning someone with a different experience than you is hypocritical and ignorant.

Pointing out a behavior is sexist isn't condemning a person. It's saying, in the strongest terms, that they need to change their behavior. If someone were genuinely condemnable, it wouldn't be worth pointing this out.

mordecai,"By the way, my favorite part of Anonymous 2:25 was where he claims that pointing out sexism "belittles your own female self." I guess "you" are supposed to silently triumph over any and all injustice -- just like he's doing by ranting in the comment section of FSP's blog."

Now let me ask you; who of you worked indeed for a woman?who of you sought out specifically a woman to work for?!And another thing: just wherever we speak about sexim, change the "woman" or "man" for any other group of people (see for example "white people" or "little people"). Then... do you see how awfully discriminating it is? No one will let you say something like that, because you will be denominated a "racist". Therefore, stop all sexism and gender bullshit.. it makes no sense at all. And once again, if with the above I did not make myself clear to you, bringing everything back to sexism, to being female is as discriminating!!

Sorry FSP to overload your comment section. But one more thing mordecai; I never ever before commented here. I am not ranting, I was just curious how a discussion would develop based on a preference working for either men or women.

Anonymous 2:25, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but what you've done here is indeed ranting. Were it capitalized, with clearer paragraphs, and with less dramatic punctuation (I don't recommend "?!" or "..") it wouldn't be as striking, but chiefly it's because it seems to come out of nowhere in the comments to a straightforward post about gender ratios. Neither FSP nor any commenter claimed to be discriminated against here.

And simply put, it takes more than saying so on a blog to discriminate in any particular direction -- you also have to be in some position of power. This is why the phenomenon of prejudiced senior male faculty is a big deal, and the purported phenomenon of prejudiced blog commenters isn't. The professors have power and can kill careers, at once or by a thousand cuts. The commenters are anonymous folks with keyboards.

So "swapping men with women" in any particular statement isn't a fair test; the situations of the men and women in question are still too incomparable.

I bet Tim does not like that you have the word "female" in your moniker. He's probably thinking "why does she need that, she should be evaluated only on her blogging and not on her gender." And then when you blog about gender related issues he gets pissy about it. Why even comment? Get your own motherfucking blog! Don't read it if you don't care about women's issues!

Anonymous at 5:04 nailed it: if you substituted any other class of people, would it be considered racist? Yes. Do we all have prejudices? Yes. There's a HUGE difference between what you feel, and what you say. Or what you feel, and what you do. It's fine to say "I have not had good experiences working with female bosses so far" or "I feel, in my personal case, I'd be more comfortable working for a man."

I hope anonymous who started this whole trollfest is not a scientist because "I interviewed with a few" does not a valid sample set make. As we all know, personal anecdotes do not substitute for data but even when talking about personal experience if you have never worked for a woman (or have only worked for one woman out of 15 guys) your sample set is way too small to make any claims about it. Tim should come work where I work, where there's a 3% population of women and all the white dudes complain about how easy women and minorities have it, and how the 3% women must be because women just can't be engineers, b/c they aren't as good at that sort of thing as the men. Then you can lapse into nuking all of the middle east or shooting illegal immigrants. There's still places where you can feel welcome Tim, I'm not sure why you'd post such trollish comments on other people's blogs.

It's incorrect of you to call me or anyone here a troll, or make assumptions about where i would like to work based on the amount of assholes you have as colleagues. I am using my real name here, so please respect my vulnerability.

I was commenting on what FSP wrote, and though i do not agree with much she has to say, I still enjoy her blog, and I think it's commendable that at least she thinks all opinions should be voiced, even if you don't.

I will not comment on my personal beliefs about women, and i have no idea why you are interested in them.

The opinion you formed of me so prematurely confirms your sad prejudice about how you think I perceive you, if you are a woman.

I do think it is very funny. Such a little question, am I a female sexist or not, generates so many (angry) comments. Why bother? If you feel sexism is the way, why bother to react on such a, apparently to you, stupid sexist comment? Just ignore it! You here are the ones ranting.

And I find it very funny.

I think many women here are very biased, and exactly that is not very scientific. So frautech, I am sorry to disappoint you, I am a scientist. And a woman on top of that, luckily without the gender sexist bias.

And guess what? Discussions mean that there will be people that disagree with you. So here are all those blogs moaning about how bad women have it. Then there will be some people not agreeing with that; that does not make them trolls. That also, is not very scientific. It happens more often, disagreements! What do you say when you give a presentation about your work and someone strongly disagrees with your interpretations for example? Do you shout "you troll!" at them? Probably not. Then also do not do that here.And do not tell someone: If you do not agree, do not read these blogs. Blah. Do you also say that about your work (see above)?Again, probably not.

Tim, I find it really weird that you say "you know that what you say reflects on you," while at the same time refusing to "comment on [your] personal beliefs about women," and have "no idea why you are interested in them."

This works both ways. What you say reflects on you. The manner in which you express yourself here, and the positions you've taken in doing so, reflect on you. Your personal beliefs about women aren't a set of abstract convictions that you're under no pressure to reveal -- they leave their mark on your behavior. And while you snark about commenters' "sad prejudice about how you think I perceive you," what they see is how you look.

If you're worried about your vulnerability, you should be thinking hard about the impressions you give, and accept some constructive criticism. You aren't going to be harmed by random internet people being vicious to you. You'll be harmed by what you say and how it sounds.

And I agree that there's something admirable in FSP's open policy towards moderation. But let's have some respect -- it's an abuse of her hospitality for men to spend half of her comments section brawling over gender issues.

It's telling that you think this is ridiculous. In fact the answer to your question is mostly "yes." (The world is full of places for men to argue and flatten everything into power struggles; a blog like this serves in part to get away from that.)

That's what you're missing here -- to be understood, some things need to be examined from more angles than yours. When people try to explain their own perspective to you, that's a struggle that should be respected, and a great gift. They aren't "expecting discussion," they expect you to listen. Instead you try to shout them down?

Posting as you did, and then being surprised when asked your beliefs, is akin to coming in to work naked and being offended when asked about it. Either put on some pants or "expect discussion" yourself.

About Me

I am a full professor in a physical sciences field at a large research university. I am married and have a teenaged daughter.
I have the greatest job in the world, but this will not stop me from noting some of the more puzzling and stressful aspects of my career as a science professor.
E-mail (can't promise to reply): femalescienceprofessor@gmail.com